gnosticism

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Examples

What I call gnosticism rests on the view, unknown to the Old Testament and cogently argued against by Aristotle, that man is a spirit with a body, whereas in my view ” that it is my view is of course absolutely unimportant ” man is a body with distinctive capacities.

(against Judaizing tendencies), Colossians (against an apparently gentile heresy which had adopted rituals and philosophies from many sources), I John (against a budding philosophical heresy later known as gnosticism) and even Hebrews.

Then there is the other side, which is reactionary, hates technical innovation, wants to reserve liturgical forms to a tiny elite, fears freedom, detests the idea of human choice, and advances a kind of gnosticism over doctrine and liturgy - always wants it to remain the private preserve of the elect who appoint each other and operate as a kind of liturgical guild.

This crypto-Manicheanism leads to all sorts of philosophical error, like "The Cult of the Cerebral," a modern form of gnosticism that exalts the Mind and over the body, the notion that we will one day "upload" our souls (minds) into computers; or the notion that there isn't a ghost in the machine at all, just a machine and everything can be reduced to mechanics.